For Your Own Good
by ricebol
Summary: Dan has an accident; Rorschach saves him but thinks it wasn't an accident. And reacts accordingly.


**Summary:** **Notes:** Dan has an accident; Rorschach saves him but thinks it wasn't an accident. And reacts accordingly.  
><strong>RatingWarnings:** PG-13 for content. Trigger warning for suicide as a subject of conversation.  
><strong>CharactersPairings:** Rorschach, Dan.  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> I don't know how many times I have to say it.

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><p>.<p>

It's dark already when Rorschach puts his shoulder into the massive door of the warehouse, picks his way down the subway labyrinth toward the Owl's Nest. He's running late, something he is extremely conscious of as he walks, one measured step in front of the other. He is late and it bothers him because Daniel will probably not let it go, as many times as Rorschach's chastised _him_ for falling behind.

No. There is something wrong with being late tonight, anticipation like an electric tingle under his mask, but it's more than just a worry over Daniel's feeble attempts to assault his dignity. It's more like—

The Nest is quiet when he steps into it.

"Nite Owl?" he asks; gets no response, thinks _Kitchen_.

He climbs the steps, trying not to hear the silence he's leaving behind as accusatory. The door at the top is closed but not locked, and the room beyond it quiet as well. An empty coffee mug on the table, dregs cold and unappealing; a plate in the sink, discarded takeout carton in the trash. Bills and financial documents scattered on the table, and a few stamped letters ready for the morning's mail, handwritten addresses, personal. Detritus. But no Daniel.

_Search the rest of the house._ Simple enough and an obvious next step, but instead Rorschach stands for just a moment longer, turning the handle of the mug towards himself, letting his hand settle on the rim. A hunch, he knows, is just the subconscious gathering details small enough to escape the conscious, using them to answer a question he hasn't quite asked.

A shadow drifts up from the doorway, and he feels something terrifying unfold in his brain.

The mug spins out from under his grip and he's gone, barreling down the steps back to the basement, lit by an unnameable urgency. He doesn't even know what he's looking for, running towards or away from, but—

But he finds it.

From the height of the stairs, he can see what he hadn't seen from the low bowels of the basement: Nite Owl, in partial costume, hanging limp and lifeless from the tangle of cords connecting the Archimedes's launch platform to the building's power supply. His bare fingers are blue where they hang lax, and he sways sickeningly, as though there were a breeze. He must have still been struggling, when Rorschach came in, only he didn't look up, why would he look up _why didn't he loo—_

Rorschach makes a noise even he can't recognize, something tearing his throat, and he takes the rest of the steps faster than he will remember.

There is a toppled ladder on the concrete nearby and he should have at least noticed that but he didn't, and now he is dragging it over and climbing up to lay his hands on Nite Owl, to grip him around the calves and lift him up and away and whatever is around his throat isn't wrapped, is only hooked there, because as soon as he's lifted Daniel falls backwards out of the tangle.

Rorschach scrambles after him, grabbing hold and twisting them in midair so that he takes the brunt of the impact, all he can do to keep Daniel's head from splitting on the concrete floor. For all the good it'll do if he's—

One hand shoved between the crook of jaw and neck, and Rorschach has to work hard to ignore the bruising, the furrow where the cord had cut deepest. There's still a pulse, weak against his fingers. Rorschach feels something like heat move through him, hitting the brainstem like morphine.

A second later, Daniel shudders, draws in a shallow, painful breath. The way it drags makes Rorschach think of reluctance.

The pieces come together in his head: the kicked-over ladder, the nigh-unreachable height, the stack of letters, the halfway state of his uniform: _Take off my cowl if they ever get me,_ he'd said one morbid night, moon bloody and high,_ I don't want to die faceless—_

Daniel keeps breathing, in and out, and Rorschach is suddenly so furious he can barely speak.

"How _could you,_" he hisses, drawing to his feet, stepping back and away lest he be tempted to take a swing or a kick. Daniel doesn't answer; is still insensate, color coming back to his skin. The fury is there because Daniel is _quitting_, derelicting his duty, giving up on their city and the people in it. That Daniel simply retiring would not incite him to this level of blind rage is not something he's willing to examine closely. He is simply a failure, weak, leaving his last goodbyes to the whim on the postal service and there hadn't been a letter there for _him,_ had there—

Then Daniel is rolling to his side to vomit sparsely on the concrete floor, body spasming. "What happened?" he manages after, voice croaky and full of horrified confusion.

"I don't know." Rorschach finds his voice is frighteningly level for the amount of anger he's feeling. It's a little like being in a fight. He crouches down to eye level with Daniel, still five feet or so away. "Why don't you tell me."

Daniel looks at him, face shocky and white. "I—"

"Why," Rorschach cuts him off, continuing the sentence, "you decided to kill yourself."

"What? I didn't." Daniel is wallowing in his cape, trying to get to his hands and knees. He just about manages it, then stays there for a moment, stabilizing. "It must have been an accident, I was working on the cabling..."

"Impulsive decision, then." Rorschach nods to himself. If Daniel is going to act selfishly and childishly, then Rorschach will have to monitor him like one does a child. "Did not know your life had become so _intolerable_," he adds, anger still simmering.

"It's not, I—"

"Clearly so, if it only took the sight of the cables to induce you to put an end to it."

A sharp coughing fit, preventing Daniel from answering. Rorschach lets him flounder, for now.

"Tested the strength of it, first?" he asks, leaning in closer; Daniel had rolled toward him, and between the two acts Rorschach is close enough to smell the bile on Daniel's breath. Disgusting, weak. "Put your hands around it, felt the tension, made sure it would hold?"

"_No,_" Daniel manages between coughs. "No, jesus, what the _fuck_, man."

"Sloppy," Rorschach says, snapping to his feet, crossing to where the ladder still stands. His eyes follow the lines of the legs, looking for a point of weakness. "Could have fallen, broken your neck. Much messier."

"Rorschach," Daniel says, and it's his determined tone of voice, and Rorschach imagines that if he turned and looked Daniel would be fixing him with those raptor's eyes that usually hide under the goggles. "I did. Not. Try to kill myself."

A folding knife from his pocket, wedged under a pin just _there_ and_ there_—and the cheap ladder falls to two pieces, clattering together to the floor. That's one threat disarmed; he will have to scour the house for others.

"Don't believe you," he says simply, pocketing the knife, and it will be a long night.

.

They can't patrol. Rorschach's laid down the law on that one—too many easy bullets to throw himself in front of—and while Dan would like to fight him on it, he really does feel like shit. And a night off is a rarity; he just wishes he didn't have to spend it like this.

Rorschach is currently visible only from the waist down as he burrows under Dan's sink in search of hazardous chemicals. Drano, bleach, CLR. Window cleaner, for fuck's sake, and this is getting ridiculous.

Dan hunches over his mug of coffee, tries to ignore the clatter as a bottle of dishwashing soap is tossed to join the pile. "You going to clean my house while you're at it?" he ventures, and it really is distressing how much he sounds like Rorschach right now.

"No."

"Just going to throw them out, huh? That stuff costs money, you know."

"Hrf. Can't..." Rorschach backs out from the cabinet, uncapping an unmarked bottle to sniff at it. Unidentifiable, and even Dan doesn't remember what that one is; he's really dug _deep_. Rorschach shrugs, tosses it onto the pile. "Can't take it with you."

"For the last time—"

But Rorschach's already moved on to the silverware drawer; fishing out a wash towel, he extracts every knife with a real edge on it and lays it crosswise over the towel.

"Okay, wait," Dan says, schooling his voice into something less pathetic. "That set was my parents', you're not going to throw those away."

Rorschach hesitates, sets the last knife into the towel. Folds it carefully around them, a neat bundle, and when he speaks it's the first time anger, hot or cold, hasn't been the prominent emotion. "...understandable," he just says, and tucks the wrapped bundle into one of his innumerable inside pockets. "Will take good care of them."

Dan just sighs, the sound rough and bubbly through his abused throat; lets his head sink into his arms.

Rorschach doesn't move for a long time; even not looking, Dan would know if he did. He's not as silent here as he is on the streets. Then, amazingly, he settles into the chair across from Dan, instead of moving on to dispose of the box of cookies Dan could theoretically choke himself on or the pillows in the living room he might try to smother himself with. Already his razors upstairs have no blades in them, and the emergency rope in the hall closet has been confiscated.

"I swear," Dan says, muffled by his arm, "It was an accident."

A long silence; his coffee's going cold and Rorschach hasn't touched his own.

"...want to believe that, Daniel." There it is again: what Rorschach's voice sounds like when the anger's not there to mask the fear. It's sharp and startling, like seeing a glimpse of something in the dawn that he's sure isn't there in the darkness or the day. Something forbidden. "Just don't want to take any chances."

"And I'm too wiped to fight you on it."

"Not trying to take advantage, just..." Rorschach taps a gloved finger on the tabletop, and Dan glances up over the edge of his arm to watch the motion. It's shakier than he would have expected.

"Could name twenty people," Rorschach continues, "that we encountered just last night, who deserve to die more than you do."

"No one deserves to die, man."

A grunt of... something. Not agreement, but not disagreement, either. "Perhaps. But you least of all. You're a good man, Daniel. The good you do should make you happy even if... the company does not."

Dan turns his head sideways, fingers the rim of his mug. "Do good men lie to their friends?"

"...no."

"I'm not unhappy," and Dan makes an effort to straighten up, meet Rorschach's masked gaze head-on. "with the company or otherwise. I'm not depressed. I'm honestly having a great time, or I was until tonight. When I slipped. And hurt myself. Accidentally."

Rorschach nods. His other hand has joined the first on the table, and he looks like he wants to hide them inside each other.

"Thank you for getting me down. For saving my life." A quirk of a smile, now that it seems he's getting through. "It's something I value."

"Always." Rorschach's own voice is rougher than it should be, and it's almost touching, until a metallic clatter tears the moment apart, knives sliding out of Rorschach's coat and onto the floor.

A blinking moment of silence, and then Dan dissolves into helpless laughter, burying his face in his arms again.

"Not... not funny." Rorschach keeps glancing between the scattered mess of blades and Dan's apparent hysterical breakdown, clearly unsure which to attend to first. His own wounded pride is visible in the fan of ink across his cheeks. "Not _funny_, Daniel."

Dan disagrees, and just goes on laughing.

"Saw you swinging there, thought you were dead," Rorschach continues, quiet, and _that_ is what stops him cold. "Thought you'd given up on us. On..." On_ me_, but he can't quite get it out.

A last hiccup of laughter; then Dan is reaching across the table to snag Rorschach's arm by the sleeve. "Hey."

Rorschach ignores him. "Didn't understand why you couldn't at least... know I'm not easy to talk to. Not very... soft. Did not ever mean to drive you to..."

"Hey," Dan says again, tugging; the laughing fit seems to have shaken something free, and he sounds more like himself now. "You know me, right? I can't ever shut up. All I do is talk."

Rorschach doesn't respond, just loosens the tension in his arm, allows it to be drawn across the table. His fingers curl in against air.

"Trust me," Dan says, shifting his grip to fill that air with flesh and bone. "If I was anywhere near that upset, you'd hear about it. More than you'd want to."

A short, sharp nod; no move to disengage his hand.

"Now," Dan says, smiling, uncurling one finger to drag over the gloved palm. "Can I _please_ have my drafting pens back?"

Rorschach huffs a breath, reaches into his coat with the other hand. Drops the sharp-ended pens, along with the safety razor inserts and other miscellanea, onto the table. "Most dangerous thing in your house," he says, picking one up, thumbing the tip.

"How so?"

"Encourage you to work on the Archimedes," Rorschach says, and the words are weighty. "Would keep them, prevent further maintenance until absolutely necessary, if you couldn't just get new ones."

"Yeah, they've got 'em at Lee's." It's a tease, but it's gentle. "I'll be more careful, okay?"

"Should have been more careful to start with. Was running late tonight, could have run later."

"I know."

"Horrible thing to find."

"I know."

Silence then, and the moment stretches just a bit too long, becomes uncomfortable. Dan releases Rorschach's hand, reaches for his mug. Sips from it, and then grimaces. Only dregs left.

"Stuff's always going cold," he says, gathering Rorschach's untouched mug up as well. "Fixed easily enough though, I guess. Want a fresh refill?"

Rorschach nods, and Dan navigates the spill of knives to get to the pot on the counter; it's too late to start a patrol at this point, well past three in the morning, but there are other things in life worth staying awake for.

.

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><p><em>(c) ricebol 2011 <em>


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